{"id":33855,"date":"2026-05-11T15:07:33","date_gmt":"2026-05-11T15:07:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/33855\/"},"modified":"2026-05-11T15:07:33","modified_gmt":"2026-05-11T15:07:33","slug":"the-worlds-20-richest-countries-have-been-ranked-for-2026-and-the-uk-doesnt-make-the-list","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/33855\/","title":{"rendered":"The World\u2019s 20 Richest Countries Have Been Ranked for 2026 \u2013 and the UK Doesn\u2019t Make the List"},"content":{"rendered":"

If we look solely at our gross domestic product (GDP), the UK<\/a> is one of the richest countries in the world. In 2025, it had an overall GDP of\u00a0\u00a32.88 trillion, making it the planet\u2019s sixth wealthiest nation. But a new study shows that GDP doesn\u2019t tell the whole story.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Financial services comparison site HelloSafe argues that a \u2018rich\u2019 country should be determined by\u00a0how its wealth translates in the day-to-day life of its citizens and whether it brings concrete improvements to the population\u2019s living standards. So, it\u00a0carried out a\u00a0research to find out which nations are really the most well-off.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Rather than simply looking at economic output on its own, its analysis combined GDP and GNI (gross national income) with quality-of-life factors like income equality, poverty rates and the Human Development Index (HDI), which looks at life expectancy, education and GNI per capita.\u00a0<\/p>\n

When all of that is factored in, the UK doesn\u2019t even make the top 20 in the world. In Europe, it ranks\u00a015th (after France). Our nation got an overall prosperity score of 38.05 out of 100, which indicated \u2018low to intermediate prosperity\u2019. That means that while there is economic development, living standards are lagging and inequality and poverty are still widespread.\u00a0<\/p>\n

According to HelloSafe\u2019s research, the most prosperous country in the world right now is Norway<\/a>, followed by Ireland<\/a>, then Luxembourg. They earned scores of 77.65, 75.06 and 74.39 respectively. While the UK didn\u2019t make the cut, most of the top 20 richest countries are in Europe.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The 20 richest countries in the world 2026,\u00a0according to the HelloSafe Prosperity Index 2026\u00a0
\n
\nNorway
\nIreland
\nLuxembourg
\nSwitzerland<\/a>
\nIceland<\/a>
\nSingapore<\/a>
\nDenmark<\/a>
\nNetherlands<\/a>
\nBelgium<\/a>
\nSweden<\/a>
\nQatar
\nGermany<\/a>
\nUnited Arab Emirates
\nFinland<\/a>
\nAustralia<\/a>
\nAustria<\/a>
\nUnited States<\/a>
\nCanada<\/a>
\nCzech Republic\u00a0
\nFrance<\/a> <\/p>\n

Stay in the loop:\u00a0sign up to our free Time Out UK newsletter<\/a>\u00a0for the latest UK news and the best stuff happening across the country.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If we look solely at our gross domestic product (GDP), the UK is one of the richest countries…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":33856,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[248,249,247,5,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-33855","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uk","8":"tag-categories-things-to-do","9":"tag-news-city-life","10":"tag-things-to-do","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/116556572616668092","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33855","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33855"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33855\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33856"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}